I’ve been in Oklahoma for the last couple of weeks. I didn’t take any pictures at all, though I had a much better camera with me than I’ve had on previous trips. For some reason, I really didn’t want to remember the reason/circumstances of the trip.
I think people are most driven to take pictures when they want to remember a certain place and time as being “real.” All critiques that center on the unreal or fabricated nature of pictures miss the core of image making in practice. Most people photograph to make things real, to fix evidence that a thing or place actually exists outside the mind.
Sometimes you don’t want things to be real. Nothing traumatic has happened (yet) and the knowledge of its inevitability is best left unreal.
